Leaders in Customer Loyalty, Powered by Loyalty360
#387: Loyalty360 Loyalty Live | Jonathan Silver, Engage People
Engage People is a technology innovation company with a vision to bring technology to the forefront to enable a better customer experience. The company seeks to leverage today’s technologies to drive improved outcomes for brands while elevating loyalty programs and the member experience.
Jonathan Silver, CEO of Engage People, has worked in the industry for over 36 years. He began his career with Maritz Canada—now Bond—before holding various senior positions in the loyalty sector. Nearly 16 years ago, Silver co-founded the precursor to Engage People before rebranding the company in 2015. Today, his role at Engage People focuses on strategy and sales.
Mark Johnson, CEO of Loyalty360, spoke with Silver about “paying with points” technology, the uChoose Rewards® program managed with partner Fiserv, and making the offer-redemption experience seamless for customers.
Engage People is a technology innovation company with a vision to bring technology to the forefront to enable a better customer experience. The company seeks to leverage today’s technologies to drive improved outcomes for brands while elevating loyalty programs and the member experience.
Jonathan Silver, CEO of Engage People, has worked in the industry for over 36 years. He began his career with Maritz Canada—now Bond—before holding various senior positions in the loyalty sector. Nearly 16 years ago, Silver co-founded the precursor to Engage People before rebranding the company in 2015. Today, his role at Engage People focuses on strategy and sales.
Mark Johnson, CEO of Loyalty360, spoke with Silver about “paying with points” technology, the uChoose Rewards® program managed with partner Fiserv, and making the offer-redemption experience seamless for customers.
Good afternoon, good morning. This is Mark Johnson from Loyalty360. Hope everyone's happy, safe and well. Wanted to welcome you back to another edition of Loyalty Live. In this series we speak with the leading agencies, technology partners and consultants in customer channel and brand loyalty about the technology trends and best practices that impact a brand's ability to drive unique experiences, enhance engagement but, most importantly, impact customer loyalty. Today we have the pleasure of speaking with Jonathan Silver. He's a chief executive officer at Engage People. How are we today, jonathan? Yeah, I'm all good, yourself Good. You need to show everyone your shirt. It's quite, you're on mute, but then we've got to see the tagline.
Speaker 2:Yeah, yeah, there you go. Hey, that's really cool.
Speaker 1:Yeah, jonathan and I are talking about a shirt. It's very cool, uh, very appropriate uh so thank you again for taking the time to join us today. Uh, first off, we'd like to start these on a personal level. Would love to know a little bit more about you yourself and a little bit about your background and also your current role with engaged people sure.
Speaker 2:So I've been working in the industry for 36, 37 years. I was five years old, in case you were wondering, when I started. That's good. I started out working at Merits Canada, which is now Bond, did a startup, worked at another marketing company and then was co-founded the precursor to. Engage about 16 years ago with Alain Cabella, who's our CTO.
Speaker 2:And we rebranded it as Engage about eight, nine years ago, and so you know we're a technology innovation company and our whole vision is how do we bring technology to the forefront to enable a better experience and not having technology for the sake of it, but actually drive better outcomes and a better member experience. And a better experience, and not having technology for the sake of it, but actually drive better outcomes and a better member experience and a better loyalty program.
Speaker 1:And so my role at Engage is really around strategy and sales.
Speaker 2:Okay, it's been a great journey and we're loving it right.
Speaker 1:Excellent. For those who may not be familiar with Engage people and how you support a brand's customer loyalty and customer experience efforts. Can you give us a brief overview of what you guys do, how you do it and the interviews that you work with? Yeah, sure.
Speaker 2:So we're two products that we bring to market. We have a loyalty management software platform called Podium and a pay-with-points product called Access Plus. Podium is a SaaS-based platform designed for anything from small loyalty programs up to enterprise. Most of our clients on it are actually large enterprise, multinational banks and other large loyalty programs and it's all designed around how do we engage members better and more effectively, and so the platform was built to be agnostic around what's the reward, what's the activity? And designed around really about using admin panels and existing tools to create a segment, market out to an individual, create a segment based on the data, create an offer, put it out in real time and then track it. And it was all built around how to be really agnostic about what the reward is.
Speaker 2:And you know I'll give an example. We have a customer in Australia who is a healthcare provider, is an insurance company for healthcare, and so you 'd actually earn points for your physical activities and your points get redeemed to reduce your insurance rates. So same idea as loyalty, but there's just no merchant gift cards travel involved. It's all very much around different kinds of activities, and so that's been a great product for us. And then about six, seven years ago we started looking at what's going to be the next?
Speaker 2:way people are going to use their points effectively and how do we get better member engagement. And we looked over people. You know, pay With Points was just starting to come into the marketplace and so we built a product called Access Plus which is our Pay With Points network and it allows you to take your points and redeem them directly at retail, at checkout. So whether you're on Amazon and you're checking out and it says, hey, do you want to use your points for this at checkout, or if you're in a POS and you tap your card and it says, hey, mark, do you want to use your points for that? And it's very much about driving member engagement without disintermediating very typical activities and driving back a better member experience and a better program benefits overall. Okay.
Speaker 1:And paying with points is something that's very germane to our audience right now, a significant amount of interest around it. You've talked a little bit about how it works. How are industries embracing that pay with points, the pay with points concept? How's it working? What are you seeing holistically?
Speaker 2:So it's interesting. We're not quite there, but we're getting to the tipping point where it's going to become more and more ubiquitous. So we started off with the financial institutions on their credit card loyalty programs saying, hey, I need a better way to engage my member, and the uptake is I don't even know how to explain it it's, it's beyond comprehension on how effective it is in the app, and so I'm switching off my phone. Um of how the user uptake of it. So we get when POS we're getting. About one in five members are taking us up on an offer and doing it multiple times. Online. We're seeing people using our offer about 3.9 times a year on average, so it's driving a massive increase in member utilization of a program which drives incremental spend on a credit card, higher retention rates, and so the overall net benefits are massive.
Speaker 2:We're now starting to see that expand into non-credit card loyalty and so we're launching a slew of customers this year who are in your traditional loyalty programs being able to use their points on an e-commerce retailer as a form of payment, and so what it does is it gets rid of all of the operational headaches of a program. We don't worry about merchandise, we're not worried about gift cards. People are redeeming directly at the merchant, merchants fulfilling it. They're doing the customer service um, and we are driving them back to yeah, you know. So it's a better, it's a lower cost for everybody, it's a better experience and higher engagement score. So it's been unbelievably effective. And now the technology has reached to the point where it's easier for retailers to come on board. So that's what's driving ubiquitous pickup.
Speaker 1:Excellent, I know you help run the you Choose Rewards program. It's a paying with points program that allows BP and Amoco customers to pay with points to the pump. Can you tell us about the program and also your partnership with Fiserv? How does that enable the process to work?
Speaker 2:Yeah, so Fiserv is a great client and a great partner for us as well, and so in Fiserv they run Uchoose, which is targeted at a couple of thousand small local credit unions under one umbrella program, and so what we've done with them is we've enabled them to use their points at Amazon, PayPal and BP today, and it's rolling out to more gas stations and more retailers over the next. Well, constantly, but there's a big release in the next couple of months.
Speaker 2:You know a member goes and they go to the gas station. They put in any eligible card and when the car, the pump, hits us, we check with YouTube to see if the customer is eligible. They have enough points. If they do, it just displays an offer to them. It says hey, mark, do you want to save 50 cents a gallon for X number of points? And off you go. And the member just says yes or no. And it's as simple as that. So what's great about it is there's no member training. There's no training of anyone at the gas station. It just happens right and people are used to looking at a POS display and being prompted, and so it's as simple as that. The person says yes, we take the points out of the account, we apply the discount to the pump and they pump and go Excellent.
Speaker 1:Since you're running a number of pay with points programs, what are you seeing? What do you think the opportunity is for brands regarding pay with points and its ability to enhance the customer experience, to drive customer loyalty?
Speaker 2:So we always look at sorts of networks. We've got two sides to the network Right. So if I think about a retailer or a partner who's accepting currency a retailer or a partner who's accepting currency so BP in that example, amazon, any other mass, any retailer actually it's now you have access to, first of all, billions of dollars worth of currency that is typically has not been able, you typically have not had access to outside of through a gift card program. Two, so it drives incremental customers to you. So we get new customers. It drives an incremental spend.
Speaker 2:So we are seeing about a 15% increase in spend and about a 15% to 20% increase in frequency of a customer who uses Pay With Points and it's at a lower cost transaction than a credit card, and so there's a massive benefit for than a credit card, and so there's a massive benefit for you as a member. And the beauty of it is they now become your customer. So if I say you choose a customer, it goes to a retailer and uses their points and we've brought them to that retailer. The retailer is now engaging the customer. They've got their own loyalty program, they sign them up and they own that customer. So you also have free marketing from that point of view, and so there's a massive benefit to the retail partner.
Speaker 2:On the new-choose side, we will drive an increase in frequency of redemption, an increase of engagement with a member, which will drive an increase in spend on their card, and so we're going to concede that data. It's confidential, but it's a double-digit increase in spend on the card portfolio. Excellent, so it's a massive benefit. And, by the way, just at a much lower operational cost for everybody, absolutely.
Speaker 1:You kind of touched on the fact that there's two sides, right. There's the network, the banks, potentially the customer itself. Paying with points involves partnerships with potential several entities. You know how does a brand look at it, how should they consider it, how do they need to be understanding of kind of the whole place to be able to implement a seamless redemption experience for the customer or the program member?
Speaker 2:Yeah, so, look, the value proposition that we have is that we have connections on both sides to multiple parties. So if you're a retailer, one connection to engage gets you all of our customers off the bat. Same thing with our customers. One integration it does is every time we add a new retailer, you get access to that. The options are you're going to go direct and you're going to do one-offs, which is, you know, the technology isn't that complicated anymore, or you can come through a consolidator, like ourselves, and so we believe that the future of loyalty will end up here, and the reason is like I'll pick on Amazon.
Speaker 2:They ship products every day and if you don't get your Amazon product the next day, people get up, you get cranky. It's very difficult for any loyalty program to deliver that level of service and that breadth of offering. When you want to go and I want to go buy something at a clothing retailer, the ability to do that is it's impossible to do that inside of the old environment. Now I can do that and you can just go and get whatever you need and you deal with their customer service and with their expertise, and so this becomes a new form of payment and a new form of driving values across the board, so we think everyone will get there eventually and it's just which mechanism?
Speaker 2:Are you going to go direct? Are you going to come through us, come through somebody else to do that?
Speaker 1:Excellent. I know you're one of the leaders in the space with regard to pay-to-points. What are you seeing? How are brands adopting to it? There's a big challenge with brands right now. We see in a lot of the research that we do that brands struggle with understanding disparate technology, getting alignment internally from the organization to help drive that investment, to help drive that change. What are you seeing with regard to how brands are kind of accepting pay with points? Are they approaching with caution or are they're kind of accepting pay with points? Are they approaching with caution or are they kind of maybe a dichotomy? What are you seeing?
Speaker 2:So what we're seeing is we're finally. Like I said, we're not quite there. We're just at the point where brands understand they need to be in this market. The technology isn't that complicated.
Speaker 1:The operational side is a little bit more complicated. Where do you actually do it?
Speaker 2:How do you engage the customer, what's the user experience? And? But we're talking to. You know most of the brands we're talking to today. It's just finding the technology, you know, finding where we're going to slot it in from the technology roadmap, um, and how do we do most? You know how do we do it most effectively. You know we have certain requirements on our side that we believe drives the best member experience. So there's a lot of conversations around that.
Speaker 1:You will start to see more and more brands accepting points as a form of payment over the next five years? Excellent, at a high level. What are some of the hurdles that brands should consider potentially when they're looking at doing pay with points? I mean best practice is something that brands should consider to make it easier to do, more impactful, more engaging.
Speaker 2:Yeah. So we've done a couple of things. So the first one is it needs to be fairly idiot-proof. It can't be complicated at the checkout, right. And so the first thing we do is we have limited always to an offer. If you're in-store, it has to be yes or no offer. If you're in store, it has to be yes or no. So I can't have somebody standing in line during the holiday season going, hey, how many points should I use? I'm just loading a line, so it's got to be. So. What we've done is we've said if it's a microtransaction and you have enough points, it's. Do you want this, yes or no?
Speaker 2:If it's a larger transaction it's going to be do you want to save $50 or do you want to save $20 on this item, yes or no? And so we've taken everything down to that yes or no decision. Online we have more, you know it's easier. How many points do you want to use? You've got time to do that, so those are kind of the best practices. Other things is we won't let any of our clients use this as a loss leader. It's got to be of equal value, else it's going to be a bad experience for everybody, and so what we're doing is we're making sure that the value proposition to our retail partners is consistent, okay, and so that we're not nobody's using their brand as a loss leader to drive value to somebody else. Really unprotective of everybody in the network Makes sense.
Speaker 1:What's the idea about not being a loss leader? What is this? It devalues the currency, devalues the process. It doesn't. It devalues the retailer.
Speaker 2:Okay, process, it doesn't. It's the value of the retailer. So if you think about like, if I'm a retailer and I've done all this effort and work in getting my paper points up and running, I don't want to have a negative experience if someone comes in and goes, well, hold on, my points are worth more at this retailer than yours, and so we have to be very, very protective of both the sponsor and the retail partner as brands.
Speaker 1:That makes sense. Okay, when you look at next generation customer loyalty, that's something that's very germane, relevant to our audience as well. We did a research project. We will have a state of customer loyalty paper coming out at the conference in June. And what does next generation customer loyalty mean to you and to engaged people? You know so for us it's very much.
Speaker 2:look, we're going through another technology leap. We don't know what AI is going to do yet, but it'll help. Right, it'll do something, and so how do we use that to go to? So? How do we use technology to get better at what we're doing and let more cost of it? Let me give you an example, so something we hadn't even thought about One of our retail partners.
Speaker 2:we do both their points issuance and point redemption said to us hey, one of the other retailers in your network we want to do a partnership with, can we use our points there, and vice versa. In your network we want to do a partnership with Can we use our points there, and vice versa. And suddenly we went hey, we've just built a quasi-coalition for a promotion because they're both on our network, on both sides, without having to go through all of this effort and mess of creating technology alignment. And so now we've been able to do things differently because the tech stacks allow us to be more creative. And so when we look at what's coming next, it's going to be you know, we've got these different technology stacks. How do we use them? To drive better member experiences, more personalization, you know, better results for everybody, but still always keeping that customer experience and the customer benefit whole.
Speaker 1:Still always keeping that customer experience and the customer benefit whole.
Speaker 2:We'll see what AI does and I'm not sure yet, but everyone's playing with machine learning and it'll have an impact and we'll see what it does shortly. Right, Absolutely.
Speaker 1:When you look at customer loyalty holistically. I've been in the industry for a while, going all the way back to our friends at Merits, canada, now Bond. Are there programs that you admire, that you are loyal to from a customer loyalty perspective, and if so, what do you like about their offering? So what's interesting?
Speaker 2:is. You know, from a personal point of view, my engagement with different loyalty programs varies depending on the kind, so you know Air Canada is a really good example. I live on the road, so having my know Air Canada is a really good example. I live on the road, so having my super elite status is the most important thing in my world. Right, and it's not about the status per se, it's the benefits of hey, if I'm stuck and I need to get on a plane, I'm going to get on a plane.
Speaker 2:Or if I need to change my flight there's a dedicated phone number, their concierge service, which is unbelievable, and so that's an example of them doing a very good job of going. These are the travelers who live on a plane. Let's make their lives as easy as possible, and then you've got transactional loyalty. You know you're a Canadian, so whether it's a drugstore and it's just hey, you're giving me some good offers. But I don't have the same emotional attachment to that.
Speaker 1:But that's my personal, that's just me.
Speaker 2:I'm not a big cosmetic shopper where my wife is, so there's more emotional connection there. So, at the end of the day, it's where you can create an emotional connection to the user is where you're going to win.
Speaker 1:Excellent. And when you look into 2024, 2025, what's on the horizon for engaged people? What are you guys up to?
Speaker 2:So, look, our massive major focus is on expanding out that network. It's right now. We have really good penetration on the financial institution side. We're now getting good penetration onto non-FR loyalties and so we're very focused on more and more points of distribution for people to use their points.
Speaker 2:So fairly tactical strategically on getting people on board, but it's fairly tactical. And then, looking on our platform side, how do we engage members better? Looking on our platform side, you know how do we engage members better? What can we do with card-linked offers and points transfers and other redemption options that get the people more engaged in a more effective manner? And so we've got new tech stacks coming out in the next year that will help us drive better member engagement as well as give our sponsors the ability to be more targeted, quicker on their promotions and their offers and being able to track in real time and adapt in real time.
Speaker 1:Excellent. Now we have uh the fun quick fire question round where we uh appreciate a short phrase or a couple word response, or I get in trouble with the content team and my boss, carly, so I don't want to be in trouble, so we'll go with what's your favorite word. Can we go with a phrase? Yeah, phrase is good, let's get it done. Nice, what is your least favorite word or phrase? It is what it is, okay. What excites you?
Speaker 2:Making a difference. Okay, we're going to build a legacy, right? I mean, that's kind of cool.
Speaker 1:That is very cool. What do you find tiresome?
Speaker 2:I got to tell you just redundancy and boredom, like just doing the same stuff over and over again, but it's the way we always want to be innovative and better right.
Speaker 1:Okay, is there a book that you're a big fan of, a proponent of, that you'd like to recommend to colleagues?
Speaker 2:Yeah, there's a book called the Hard Things About Hard Things. Okay, it's a really good book for anyone in a leadership position. Ben Horowitz is the author of it. Okay, it's about how to make tough decisions Excellent.
Speaker 1:What profession are the ones you're currently in and doing an amazing job in? Would you potentially like to try?
Speaker 2:Well, I always wanted to be an astronaut, but I think it's too old for that now. Right, I think it's so cool to be out in space.
Speaker 1:Yeah. I don't think I could do that, but that's just me. We already asked that question. What do you enjoy doing that you don't, uh, probably have as much time to dedicate to. You'd like to do more of, oh, travel don't travel.
Speaker 2:Okay, and, by the way, my travel now sucks. I go into business, but I love seeing countries in the world.
Speaker 1:It's, that's, yeah, it's always fun and who inspired you to be the person that you are today yeah, just my family.
Speaker 2:It wasn't an individual, it's just, you know, having the right family around me saying go, you can do whatever you need to do, just take a risk. Okay, perfect.
Speaker 1:What do you typically think about at the end of the day?
Speaker 2:All the stuff I didn't get done during the day 100%.
Speaker 1:And how do you want to be remembered by your friends and family?
Speaker 2:Just being solid, being dependable and solid Okay.
Speaker 1:Excellent. Well, jonathan, thank you very much for taking the time to talk with us today. It was great reconnecting with you. As always, I love this shirt. I loved hearing what you guys are doing with regard to pay with points. It is a very relevant and germane topic for our audience and looking forward to hearing more about it at the Loyalty Expo in a couple of weeks. I'm looking forward to seeing you in a couple of weeks, absolutely.
Speaker 1:Thank you everyone for taking the time to join us today. Make sure you join us back for another edition of Loyalty Live and looking forward to having everyone back soon. Until then, have a wonderful day.